One Week

So, the other day I was interrupted while going on about my week. But here is a short synopsis for those who weren't in my brain that day (hopefully everyone!).

• Monday = 4 hours of class
• Tuesday = 1 hour of class, prep for next day's clinical (pathophys statement, information on 4-5 anticipated meds)
• Wednesday = an hour's drive each way to clinicals for 8.5 hours 
• Thursday = no class, but an assignment from clinicals that is due in 48 hours; takes between 6-8 hours to finish
• Friday = five hours of class

Weekends are "free" in the morning, but since I have Aftasie after 2pm I only have the mornings to do homework. Sometimes I get stuff done in the afternoon with her but not usually. 

I figured out I have 21 hours of class a week, plus homework. I'm also taking one class that I don't go to class for but have to do the work on my own (Spanish), so it would be more like 25 hours of class a week. 8.5 of that is clinicals and 2 are driving, but that's still a lot of class! It definitely works out to more than full-time work with homework. And even then, I am not anywhere close to as "up" on my work as I was in the first two years of school. But I'm more than passing, and that's OK with me. I asked myself the other day -- if I were to get passing grades and be relaxed, comfortable with my own learning, and have plenty of time at home, would I just stop doing certain assignments or slack in certain areas? I mean, what's the difference between an 80 and a 90? I still do my reading and stuff, but sometimes I feel like I should just let stuff go and focus on whatever makes me a good nurse and just forget about tests. But I'm afraid if I did that I would start failing.

Oh, speaking of reading, reading assignments can easily be over a hundred *textbook* pages for each week. Easily. A typical week: 4 chapters of peds; 2 of medsurg; 2 of research; 1 of history textbook, 1 of history sourcebook, and 11 chapters of reading from the test prep books (I don't do these unless I'm not passing practice tests, though, and they are very short chapters).